It will be Father’s Day on Sunday, June 18. On this day we celebrate our fathers but are we not celebrating our understanding of the ideal father? As wonderful as our fathers may or may not have been, no earthly father matches our ideal, that need or desire for the ideal father, is a part of which binds all of humanity together on this day. Are we not thankful, therefore, that there really is an ideal father? That father is our eternal Father God.
When the
disciples asked Jesus how they should pray to the eternal Father God, Jesus
began his illustrative prayer with the address, “Our Father, which art in
heaven” (Matthew 6:9-13). Some would
prefer an address such as “My Father, which art in heaven”. Did Jesus understand himself as a special
emissary, co-equal with the ideal Father God or was he praying as one of the believing
spiritual children of God? An argument could be made either way, but in his lifetime, as recorded in the three synoptic Gospels, Jesus never claimed to be God. The later, theologized Gospel of John, however, disagrees.
G. Goslaw
Landers, CA
